I’m sort of running out of pictures.
That’s mostly because I’m living my other life for the next week or so. No worries. I have plenty of pictures stashed away that you haven’t seen. For that matter, they are pictures that I’ve sort of forgotten about.
Pictures like this one, a nice bucolic meadow picture. Pretty, isn’t it?
Or, not.
This is the Lower 9th Ward, maybe ten years after Hurricane Katrina broke the levees and flooded what was once a vibrant community.
Sure, some people have returned. Some people rebuilt on their own. Some people returned to buy and live in Brad Pitt’s Make-It-Right homes. That’s the very corporate foundation that is being sued because many of the homes are falling apart. It appears that the all-star architects who designed them had no clue about our extreme weather. Mr. Pitt tried to decouple himself from the lawsuit, but the judge basically said that he couldn’t have it both ways.
That’s not the point of this picture. I’ve long said the people shouldn’t live here. The area is so far below sea level that cracks and potholes in the streets, leak. Apparently, nature agrees with me. Most of the land has returned to what it once was. Even wild animals have returned. I’ve seen feral pigs, snakes and turtles. A friend of mine said that he saw an alligator.
This picture is an example of nature seeking stasis.
Once, on this bit of property there were at least two or three houses. If you return to it in winter when everything is dead or dormant, you can see the foundations, water pipes, and the most spooky thing, porches to nowhere. Oh, and renegade toilets.
I’m thinking that when I get back, I should go back to the scene of the crime. I used to go about four times a year to chart the progress. I haven’t been back in a long while. I’ll add that to my list.
STORYTELLER 
Isn’t that interesting how nature knows what to do in spite of us?
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Nature always seeks stasis and she’s ruthless getting there.
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Yes
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Yes, I’d love to see what “the scene of the crime” looks like now. Your comment about “porches to nowhere” is really telling. I saw many of them in Mississippi a few weeks ago.
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MS was hit a little more by the leading edge of Katrina, as opposed to us that got whiten the return. I’ll add it to my list of stuff I gotta do before the start of Carnival.
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It’s interesting to consider how many places appear settled and at peace today but have another history. It’s a beautiful photo nonetheless.
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I like the idea of a renegade toilet – my father, an architect, bought a large, stone, almost ruined, very old (1642) house on the Border between Scotland and England, which was known in the village 5 miles away as “the auld bugbear”. In the spec it announced the presence of “a low level toilet” which was eventually discovered, totally disconnected, in a shed, with a dead crow upside down in it.
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Stone the Crows… that was an old band, from somewhere in the UK. That’s a wonderful thing about the UK… something made in 1642. While there are old building in the US, they don’t come close. We live in a house built in 1854 and that’s only about 20 years after the first commoner houses were built in the city.
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